Junior Devilettes taking over as city's winning hockey team

Then, the Knights took over the torch – until Saturday’s loss in Owen Sound.

And now, it’s the Junior Devilettes, who won Provincial Women’s Hockey League games in Aurora and Barrie this past weekend to push their current streak to 11 straight victories.

“We’ve come a long way,” coach Ted Brown said. “Early in the year, we had some games where we’d blow two-goal leads in the middle of the third period. The players are learning how to keep that lead now. That’s been a big difference. They just keep the pedal to the metal and finish strong.”

There have been a couple of quirks along the way.

The middle part of this torrid stretch included a perfect 5-0 run through the recent USA Canada Cup in Kitchener. That was, strangely enough, only good for a bronze medal.

Like international hockey, the tournament awarded three points for each regulation win. The Devilettes scored quickly on the first shift of overtime in their fourth outing against Dawson College, which netted just two points, ending their quest for gold.

So they beat the Oakville Hornets in the third-place game, also on the first shift of overtime. Emma McKnight, committed to Queen’s University, was the hero in both contests.

London is seventh in the PWHL, but that’s a misnomer, too. First-place Nepean has played eight more games than the Devilettes to date and they’re only 10 points ahead of them.

“Every game we’ve played in this league, we’ve gained a lot of ground,” Brown said. “We blacked out weekends early or else we’d be top five easily. We’ve got games coming up with teams ahead of us (including Kingston on Friday at the London Sports Park), so those are big. We could move up quickly.”

The early blacked-out weekends included trips to the Michigan area, where they beat Michigan State and Adrian College after topping the University of Windsor. They also went to New York and played Elmira College, one of the top Div. III teams in the United States.

Jamie Johnson, brought in from British Columbia to be a key stopper, and Rachael Bentley have handled the crease duties.

Maggie McKee leads the team in scoring and Julia Gosling has scored 12 goals in just 12 league games. She missed two weeks recently with a wrist injury and the Devilettes kept winning.

“It was good for the other girls,” Brown said. “They had to pick up the slack because Julia scores a lot of goals and they did.”

The Devilettes will lose both Goslings – Julia and younger cousin Nicole – to international duty for a couple of weeks in early January. They were named to Canada’s roster for the under-18 world championships in Obihiro, Japan.

They also have been forced to cope without veteran forward Kyra Minoletti, who is out for the rest of the season with a knee injury. It’s the second major injury during the past few seasons for the 18-year-old from Melbourne.

“It’s unfortunate. She’s a great kid and this was a victory lap year for her,” Brown said. “But these kids are amazing. She’s going to stay with our team and do stats. It was the same with Meaghan Chittick (of Woodstock), who’s coming back from a broken wrist.

“When they’re not playing, they still want to be part of it and go on the road with the team.”

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